Barely Breathing
by tripsonflatsurfaces
Summary: Bella is left to care for her drug addicted brother when their mother passes away. she takes the only high paying job she can find caring for a CEO'S four year old daughter. very adult. be warned.
1. Chapter 1

Breath

Chapter 1

Bella, December 27th 2011

I stand at the window in my mom's hospital room listening to the weeze of the machines and the beeping of monitors. It stinks of antiseptic and death. I roll my eyes to myself and shake my head. Overly dramatic my mother would say about thinking the hospital smells like death. Maybe she'd be right. Mom, Renee, isn't talking today. The doctors keep her sedated a lot of the time. When she does talk she doesn't talk to me. She cries out for my brother Jasper. He isn't here. He can't be here. When she was awake and semi alert three days ago she left me with strict instructions to give him all the cash we have between the two of us. She doesn't want him to get sick. I looked at her like she was out of her mind.

"Mom, that's our rent money. It's like nine hundred dollars." I reminded her. My arms folded over my chest I wait for her standard response. It's a shitty three bedroom apartment that we share. I pay most of the bills because my mom is too sick to work, she has stage four liver cancer and my brother won't work or can't work depending on how you look at it.

"Bella! He will get sick without his medicine. Do you want him to get sick? Do you?" She's getting worked up now. I can see her blood pressure spiking. I do my best to calm her down, to talk to her rationally.

"No mom. I don't but maybe it would be the best thing for him." I remind her. It's what all three rehabs have told us. He needs to detox in a controlled environment and then stay a minimum of three months at a live in facility. He doesn't listen. He's a heroin addict, he can't listen.

"He could die! We will find a way to pay the rent, we always do. The important thing is that Jas is well." She's resolute in her decision and I know that when it comes to my brother I don't need to argue. It's a waste of breath and energy. That was three days ago. He doesn't call me and I won't call him so I sit alone and listen to my mother's monitors and wait for a doctor to give us more news I don't want to hear.

The doctor finally comes late in the afternoon. He seems nice enough even when he's delivering totally shit news.

"Ms. Whitlock…." He says. I flinch and respond,

"Please call me Bella and it's Swan, Not Whitlock." I grimace at him. He nods and continues on.

"Ms. Swan your mother isn't improving. She has stopped responding to treatment and well we've been keeping her comfortable but there's only so much we can do here. She needs to be in a place where she can be comfortable and…." He stops and I know what he's going to say,

"Where she can pass in peace." I say mostly to myself. He grips my shoulder gently, trying to comfort me.

"Is there anyone you can call? This isn't a decision you should make alone. Her chart says you have a brother….or her husband maybe." He suggests. I feel a few tears escape and I wipe them away quickly.

"Her husband passed away 5 years ago and my brother isn't good at these things. It's just me." I say softly. I don't want to get into the sorted tale of my mom's many marriages and divorces. He say's he will give me some time to think it over and let him know how we want to proceed. He gives me some reading material on some different hospices in the Seattle area. I flop down on the nearest bench and sigh scrubbing my hands down my face. I haven't showered or eaten and I can't think here. I can't make this decision here. I go back in her room and get my purse. I kiss her cheek and tell her I am going to go home but come back tomorrow. I make sure to tell her nurse too in case she wakes up.

I climb the stairs to our apartment slowly as I don't want to see what's going to greet me when I open the door. We have an elevator, its broken. It's just as well. I don't mind the third floor hike. It gives me time to think. I reach in my bag and check my phone. I see my boss from my office job has called three times and the diner has called twice. I sigh knowing I need to go back to work but I need to be with my mom too. If I'm not working no one is making money and the bills aren't getting paid. As I approach our floor I can hear them fighting and it only confirms my worst fear, Jasper is home. I know that's terrible but I really just want to be alone. I want to clean the apartment, call my bosses back and go to bed. If he's home and his girlfriend is with him I can't. I open the front door and watch as a coffee mug flies across the small space we use as a dining room. It smashes into tiny pieces of porcelain against the wall. Maria is cursing at him in Spanish.

"I said I was sorry! You were sleeping. I didn't think you were joansing that bad." He screams at her. He's wearing a stained white tank top and jean shorts in December. The tops of his feet are black and blue from trying in vain to shoot up there. He misses a lot. He stopped being able to use the veins in his arms about year ago after his third over dose. He looks awful, worse than usual. His blonde hair is chin length and unwashed. He is tall and thin naturally but he's definitely lost weight. He'd rather shoot up then eat. The apartment stinks of unwashed humans and cigarettes. I stand quietly and wait to be noticed. I wish I could leave. I wish I had somewhere I could go.

"Hey look! Bella's home. " Jasper say's happily. He's so high. Any minute now he will start to fade in and out, slurring his words and not making sense. Sometimes he drools. My mom wipes his chin and sits with him until he comes back to us. I let him drool.

"Yep. Hey we need to talk about mom. She's not getting any better and we have to make…" I say. He cuts me off.

"And I will help you with anything you need but first did Mom send any money home for me? I um need it real bad. I messed up and I have to take care of Maria." He smiles lazily, he is trying to be charming. He's trying to be the good southern boy his Daddy raised. Maria stands in the kitchen in her bra and a pair of shorts. I don't know why she's not dressed and I am too tired to ask. She has another coffee mug in her hand and it's ready to fly at a moment's notice.

"Yeah about that, I only have a hundred bucks. Diner's been real slow and mom's check hasn't come. " I hope he's high enough that he buys it. I hope he will take the hundred and leave so Maria can score.

"That's not enough! We need at least five Bella. I know you have it." Maria snarls. I've been home five minutes and I am already sick of them.

"Hundreds the best I can do." I say directly to Jasper not even acknowledging Maria's statement.

"I'll take it sis. I'll make it work." He says and smiles. He puts his hand on my shoulder like the doctor did before.

"You know Bell's someday this is all gonna be better. Mom's gonna get better and Maria and me we are gonna get married. We can buy a house and all live together." He likes to lament like this when he's high. I used to believe him when I was younger but now I see it for what it is. He also used to tell me he was going to get clean but that's never happened. I sit my purse on the counter and carefully pull out two fifty dollar bills trying not to let him see what I have in my wallet which is all our rent money and the money for the electric bill. All and all about fifteen hundred dollars. He takes the hundred from me thanking me over and over again. Maria goes to get dressed so I try to talk to him about hospice but all too soon she is back and pulling him out the door. At least I can say I tried. When they are finally out the door I decide cleaning the apartment can wait and get in the shower. When I get out and go into the kitchen my purse is on the floor and my wallet is gone. They came back for my wallet while I was showering. I slide down the wall in my towel and cry. I cry for my mother who isn't getting better and I cry for my brother who I don't think will make it without her. I cry because I need it and I cry because with no one watching I can. I hear my phone ringing over by the fridge. I let it ring until it stops and then my voice mail chimes. I stand up and go get it. When I check my messages it's a nurse letting me know I need to come back because my mother is passing away. .

Author's notes- They say to write about things you know and sadly, without going into too much detail, I do know about this. This isn't going to be easy to write and for a lot of you it may not be easy to read. I know usually when I finish a story it has a happy ending but I can't promise that this time because I don't know how this ends. If this isn't going to get read please someone tell me now so I can write this and not post it. It's too personal to me for it to sit in open space with no one reading it. Writing is baring your soul, even when it's fiction. It's like opening a wound and hoping it heals as the words come out. I don't know if the words can heal this but I'm willing to try and I am willing to share. Please don't judge my grammar ect. I am out of practice. This is not beat'd because I don't have one.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own twilight.

Barely Breathing Chapter 2

My Mother died ten minutes after I got the hospital. It's been three months and I think things are getting worse instead of better. I am barely making my bills…..Okay I am not making my bills. My car has been reposed when I only had two payments left on it which means I walk to work or take the bus. I lost my office job when my mom passed. They kept me on as long as they could but he didn't need an assistant to the assistant anymore. Jasper is worse than ever, worse than I have ever seen him. He doesn't eat or drink, he just gets high. We don't really speak. I can barely look at him since I caught him with the nods at Mom's memorial. I don't know where he's getting money but I sure as hell don't have any so it's not from me. I haven't paid my rent in two months. This will be the third month it goes unpaid. I could call my Dad but I won't.

My relationship with my father isn't complicated. He's too much like me for it to be complicated. He lives his life like I do. Head down and mouth shut. He's the chief of police in a town called Fork's. I was born there and stayed there till the divorce when I was 3. My Dad was my mom's first marriage. She was nineteen and he was twenty. They were so in love from the way my mother told it. "We were simply mad for each other, Bella. He hung the moon and stars." She said to me. I guess he must have been tired from all the celestial hanging because it ended nearly four years into their marriage. Charlie isn't the type to fight or make a fuss so when she took me to Arizona he didn't contest it and when she stopped sending me to him for summer visitation he just packed up and came to me or when I was old enough I met him in California. After my dad my mom married Jasper's dad. They didn't date long. They met when I was three, married by the time I was four and had Jasper by the time I was five. If she had dated him a little longer she may have figured out he is a functioning alcoholic with two other ex-wives. They divorced when I was sixteen. I wanted to move back to forks to live with Charlie but Renee wouldn't hear of it. She said we had to be together as she moved us from state to state to follow whatever loser she was in love with then. Her last husband was Phil. He moved us into his house and gave my mom everything she wanted until he passed away in a car accident five years into their marriage. When he passed he left my mom the house and a substational life insurance policy. By that time Jasper was using regularly and my mom thought she could help him. She sent him to one expensive rehab after another. They were basically hotels with group therapy. Jasper would last thirty days at one, come home and use then go back to another with a different program. In and out he went all the while my mom's funds are dwindling and she started to get sick. Finally she was out of money and Jasper needed to go to a rehab in Malibu. It specialized in holistic healing and spiritual guidance. This was my mom's miracle cure. She sold Phil's house to pay for it. He lasted three weeks. We moved back to Washington State on what was left of her savings, about four hundred bucks. We've been in this shitty apartment ever since.

I walk into the apartment building soaked through to the skin from walking home in the rain. I once again go slowly because I don't want to go into the apartment. I think idly about how I envy the girls who are getting pretty somewhere to go to the movies with their boyfriends or out to drinks with their girlfriend's. I am soaked to the bone and will be doing none of those things tonight. No tonight I will make a lean cuisine and probably scrub puke out of the carpet. That's Jasper's new thing, he pukes. I trudge up the stairs thinking about my long forgotten stack of books. I love to read but haven't had time in a long time. Maybe someday. I make it to the front door and see the eviction notice with a note from the super. He's sorry for my loss but can't let us stay anymore without the rent. I could call Charlie and ask him for the rent but I won't. I can't make Jasper his burden. He would invite us to stay with him and a cop and a drug addict don't mix.

Inside the apartment Maria is passed out on the couch with a lit cigarette in her hand. I put it out in the ash tray and scream at her to wake up. It's invain. She's breathing but doesn't even move. I look down the hallway and Jasper is slumped against the wall with his chin to his chest. Nothing new there. He's passed out. I sit my stuff down and go to him, trying to wake him. I slap his cheek lightly once then twice and then a third time. Panic sets in when I feel that's he's almost cold. Barely luke warm to the touch. I yell his name over and over. No response. He would tell me not to call nine one- one. "No cops! Bella don't be stupid!" I hear his voice in my head but I dial my cell anyway and pray they come in time.

At the hospital I am sequestered in a small conference room. The police question me over and over about the large amount of drugs in our apartment. I tell them that they are the addict's not me. I even offer to drug test for them. Maria isn't helping. When she wouldn't come around for the paramedics they strapped her into a gurney and brought her in. she's awake now and calling the police every name she can think of and refusing to cooperate with the staff. I gave them what little information I had so they can reach her family. No one will tell me how my brother is. I don't know if he's even alive.

"Ms. Swan I am going to give you one more chance to tell the truth. Were you intending to sell the heroin and ecstasy in your home?" He's asked me this over and over and I keep saying the same thing!

"No. I don't do drugs. I don't sell drugs. I won't even take fucking midol, okay? I came home and found him exactly the way the paramedics found him!" I realize I'm screaming at him when the words are leaving my mouth and I can't stop them. It feels good to scream.

"Bella you dumb bitch! I can see you and don't you tell those fucking pigs a thing! I swear to god you get me locked up and I will fuck you up!" Maria screams from another room. Now I am just embarrassed, tired and cold. I am just laying my head down on the table when the ER doctor comes in. he sits down and opens a case file.

"Is he dead?" I ask. It's the first thing that flys from my lips. The ER doctor smiles politely.

"No. he's not but I suspect when this is all over he might wish he was. We've given him narcam which is a very powerful drug used to bring around a patient suspected of drug abuse. We've also pumped his stomach. We didn't find any food but what we did find was almost ninety sleeping pills." This makes no sense to me. Jasper doesn't do sleeping pills.

"Jasper doesn't do sleeping pills." I say. The doctor smiles kindly.

"Ms. Swan your brother is a drug addict. This isn't casual use." He says as if I'm ignorant to the situation.

"I know. I know my brother is an addict but he doesn't do sleeping pills." I think carefully as I speak to make sure I'm not giving the cops anything they can use against him.

"Is it your practice to enable him?" one of the cops says. I want to scream at him that I didn't start it and I don't want to finish it. I just want to be alone for a minute. I ignore the cop and try to focus my attention on the doctor.

"We have to bring in a psych consult because it's a suspected suicide attempt. You can see your brother shortly." He says closing the file preparing to leave. I breathe deeply and focus on not crying. A suspected suicide attempt. Jasper tried to take his own life. I put my elbows on my knees and the heels of my hands in my eyes rubbing hard.

"Ms. Swan?" the doctor says from the doorway.

"Yeah?" I answer but don't look up. A beat passes and the doctor says

"You saved his life. If you hadn't come home….he'd be dead. They both might be." I try to feel good about his words. I try so hard but part of me wonders if being saved mattered to him at all.

A thin vinyl curtain separate's me from Jasper. I am pacing back and fourth outside the small area waiting for the shrink to leave. To give Jasper credit he hasn't raised his voice or thrown anything. I wonder if they've given him anything to keep him calm. The shrink comes out and smiles at me. I see Jasper lying in the bed as I walk in and pull the curtain closed behind me.

"Sleeping pills? Really Jasper? Christ!" I put my hands on my hips and wait for an answer.

"I'm not getting better." He says simply. It's so honest it's almost disarming.

"No shit. You've graduated to pill popping! I say. He looks into my eyes with tears in his own.

"No. you don't understand. I'm not getting better. I've tried rehab, I've tried detox, methadone and even prayer but nothing works. I can't stay clean Bell's." he stops talking and I hold my breath.

"The doctor was right. You tried to…." I can't say the words. He brings his knees to his chest and holds them tightly.

"I woke up and I didn't want to be a burden to you anymore. Mom took care of me and you took care of her. You shouldn't have to take care of Me." he says.

"So sleeping pills were the answer?" as I speak I realize that I'm tired. Tired, cold and hungry. Jasper looks as tired as I feel but he's had an over dose and his stomach pumped. What does that say about me?

"It seemed better then detox." He says. I take a deep breath and blow It out.

"They are charging you. The cops said they can get you for intent to sell. There was so much in the apartment. They said they can charge all of us. You, me and Maria." I try not to sound scared out of my mind at the possibility of going to jail.

"We need a lawyer Bell's. Don't say anything else to the cops until you have one for us. I won't. Tell Maria not to either. Maybe we can get some kind of group rate…" He's rambling. I back myself into a hard plastic chair and wrap my arms around myself as I start to laugh humorlessly.

"We are fucking homeless! We got evicted today." I tell him.

"So we have the money for the lawyer?" He says. I stand up and get my purse before I punch him in the mouth.

"We don't have the money for a lawyer because you stole all our rent money for drugs. I don't have the money to send your worthless ass to rehab because you stole all the money for drugs. You know you almost had me fooled with all that total shit about how you didn't want to be a burden to me. I almost bought it too which makes me a bigger sucker than you are a liar! I'm out! Deal with this yourself, you fucking junkie jerk off! And just so you know your girlfriend has been calling the cops pigs for an hour and offering to blow any orderly that will sneak her out of here." I pull my wet coat on and give him a little salute before I yank the curtain and run face first into a volunteer with a clip board. She steps back smiling politely clutching her clipboard to her chest.

"Um are you the family of Jasper Whitlock?" I step around her. She's still smiling.

"Sadly but I'm done he's on his own and right in there." I jerk my thumb behind me. "Be careful lady he's a charmer and desperate." I say in a huff loud enough for him to hear me.

"Bella don't go!" Jasper calls after me. I just keep walking until I feel like I'm far enough away to breathe. I don't know where I am in the hospital when I stop walking but its quiet and I'm grateful. I slide down the wall and stare out the wall of windows across from me. It's well past midnight and I know when the sun comes up I'll have to bite the bullet and call my dad for help. I hate the idea of it. I hate asking anyone for anything.

At some point I fall asleep and wake up to the sweet faced woman from Jaspers room. With a little sleep I can manage to smile back at her. Her eyes are big and brown and her hair is caramel colored and curled like an old movie star. Her silk blouse and black pencil skirt are immaculate even though I was sure she'd been here all night. I tried not to think about how hellish I must look to her.

"Ms. Swan. My name is Esme and I've been working with your brother most of the night." She says. I look up at her with no expression. I sigh heavily pulling out my ID and my debit card. I hope they will take a postdated payment and set up a postdated payment on the rest of the bill.

"What are you doing?" She asks. I stand up slowly and smooth my clothes out.

"This is about the bill right? I hope you'll let me make payments because I've been evicted and I've got no car so suing me for the debt really isn't gonna do any good." I know I'm being harsh, maybe even rude but I've had it. She touches my hand gently her face softening.

"Ms. Swan Jasper's gone." She holds on to my hand while I crumble.

"He died and the last things I said to him were awful. I shouldn't off been so mean." I sob out to her, a total stranger.

"Oh no honey's he's not dead. We've sent him to rehab." She's trying to be reassuring. I'm still crying.

"I can't afford that!" I put my hands over my face to try and stop my tears but it's not working. The dame is open now and I can't stop.

"Ms. Swan, what's wrong?" She asks me. My only response is everything. Esme gets me some coffee, clean clothes and explains to me what's going to happen next. I only hope it works for all of us this time.

A/n- Sorry this took so long. I'm short on time and words but I'm doing my best. I hope you like it and thanks for the follows, reviews and kind words.


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